Sir Magnus
by Ryzaria
Summary: Follow the elusive Sir Magnus and his motley crew of mercenaries as they fight...and...stuff...
1. Band of Brothers and Sisters

Har, I return with a brand new fiction of fan-ness. Rarh...

**Title: **Sir Magnus

**Summary: **Follow the elusive Sir Magnus and his motley crew of mercenaries as they fight...and...stuff...

_Chapter 1: Band of Brothers...and Sisters...yeah..._

The wind was getting up, Magnus noticed as he took a first dram from his whiskey bottle. It was always cold at the top of the Grado mountain range, but tonight it had smashed into him with full force. It stripped any illusions of warmth granted by the thick armour he wore, leaving nothing but a feeling he should be at home in front of the fire. He shrugged it off though, taking a second dram, and looking down, down the steep cliff face, and into the forest.

It was always like this when they were on the run from a local magistrate who decided that he didn't like the fact his gold was now in the pockets of Sir Magnus and his mercenary group. Magnus would always argue against that, saying that the lord shouldn't have left the money where anyone could find it. Locked securely in a safe hidden by a painting, for example. Now, all they could do was wait. They were good at waiting.

Magnus glanced around at his travelling partners, the closest thing to friends and family he had. Closest to him was Germaine, a Mage down on her luck. Literally. The reason she joined up with Sir Magnus' Mercenaries was that she had lost a bet with the big crime lord of Magvel, Don Carmona. Of course, he said, she didn't have to repay the money. She could simply opt to spend the rest of her days in a wheelchair drinking soup with a straw. A tall woman, with long blond hair and piercing blue eyes, she wore a long, red dress that snaked down to the floor. At the present moment, she was sitting, quietly telling her diary all she did today.

Next nearest was the Myrmidon, who everyone knew as Mr Jack. No one really knew who or what he really looked like. He was incredibly tall, at least 6ft 6in, and always hung at the back, radiating a sort of menace that leads to people inadvertently running or giving large amounts of cash in the hope that he won't break the other leg. His face was completely hidden behind a long robe that he wore, and a mask that hid his facial features. The mask consisted of two colours: White and pale blue. The effect was disconcerting to a lot of people. It was the main reason why Mr Jack wore that particular mask. He liked the money that people dropped in his path. Right now, he was standing motionless beside a tree, looking watchful. Constantly alert.

Exhibit C was a young Dragon Knight who went by the name of Logan, an arrogant braggart who spent more time retelling his deeds in battle than actually doing them. Most of his 'daring escapades' are a load of rubbish, only told to gain the pleasures of alcohol, meat, and indeed the pleasures of the flesh. The shortest of the group, at 5ft 7in, he was nevertheless liked by the rest of the group. Or tolerated at least. They hadn't found a rock big enough to smash his brains out, probably. His wyvern, Thunder, was currently curled up, looking massive and intimidating (a natural state of wyvern existence), some way off from the group. Magnus knew however that if Logan called, Thunder would fly to him immediately. Speaking of Logan, he was in one of the tents, cooking up some sort of food treat.

And lastly, there was Sir Magnus himself. A former Knight of Grado, he was fired under suspicious circumstances. These suspicious circumstances involved large amounts of money magically appearing inside his pockets. Surprisingly enough, the committee didn't believe his story that "fairies brought them during the night, honest." He didn't care that he was free of the army. He'd heard about what was going on in there. Grado has decided to stretch its military wings, attacking long-time ally Renais. Even now, the place was in turmoil. Sir Magnus smirked as he thought of it, brushing the greying blue hair out of his eyes. Knight no longer, he was now a Monk, wielding the holy forces to use against the monsters that now seemed to plague the land. He didn't know why he became a Monk. He just had, and he'd found he was surprisingly adept with it.

Turning back round, he headed towards the camp. There was now a fire going, Germaine and Logan huddled around it. Both were eating some sort of rice substance. You had to call it rice, because you couldn't eat it while thinking of it as wyvern vomit. Sir Magnus nodded to them all as he sat down, placing his hands just over the fire to give them back some warmth. It was cold, certainly. Remarkably so. Almost as if there was something evil, lurking in the air. Or on the ground.

Magnus could hear shuffling, and a sort of moaning sound escaping from the nearby forests. Sighing, he reluctantly removed his hands from the fire, and brought out his most powerful tome, Divine. "We have company, it appears..." he muttered.

Germaine nodded, springing upwards and grabbing her Thunder tome. Or, what she thought was her Thunder tome. Realising it was actually her diary, she flung it away, grabbing a yellow-covered tome with a picture of storm clouds on the front, the obvious Thunder tome. Logan was the opposite of her bustling about, however. Laughing, he slowly moved himself into an upright position, and whistled, acting almost bored. There was a heavy thumping sound, followed by a bright yellow demi-dragon bursting into the clearing, giving a mighty roar as it did so. Logan grinned, mounting Thunder with ease.

Magnus smirked. "You'll fall off one day, you know."

"Haven't yet, Maggy!" Logan yelled, whooping as Thunder started to flap its mighty wings, hovering ten feet above the ground.

Magnus let the insult slide. You learned to, when you'd been around Logan for so long.

At this point, Mr Jack materialized. "They come," he said simply, his Killing Edge out in front of him in the stance known as the "Kill Monsters Manoeuvre".

And they did. Large spider-like monstrosities scuttled out from the undergrowth. Dead corpses revived by dark magic moaned and groaned as they lurched towards the group. Skeletal warriors moved forward, cackling manically, spinning the weapons they bore with expert control.

"Be prepared," Mr Jack said, readying his weapons. "This may take a while."

- - -

Let us pull back from the soon-to-be battlefield. Moving away, we can see in the distance, a large castle. That is Grado Castle, home of Emporer Vigarde, his son Lyon, and oh-so-many servants. And at the top of the tower, lives a Bishop. An incredibly powerful one, at that. However, looking at him, you couldn't tell that he was a user of holy, divine powers. In fact, looking at him, you'd guess he had leprosy. Green, mottled skin looked like it was stretched across an evil face, which was currently contorted in a grin. This was Riev, the master of monsters, and he was currently very happy.

He could see through the eyes of the beasts that he called his pets, feel what they felt, tasted what they ate...it was something that he treasured deeply. Right now, he was feeling the spider's hunger, as in the Grado Mountains, she, along with other evil-born beasts, moved towards a group of travellers. Riev grinned to himself as his spider struck-

And suddenly screamed, as he was knocked back several metres, smashing into the opposite wall. The spider had just been headbutted by an angry dragon-beast, and it was now on its back, quite obviously dead. Picking himself up slowly. Riev staggered back into his chair, screaming.

The words, "They aren't SUPPOSED to fight back against my pets!" screeched across the castle.

This was shortly followed by Lyon screaming back, "Shut up, dammit! I'm doing acts of supreme evil!"


	2. Love All The Huge Scaly Monsters

**bChapter 2 – Love All The Huge Scaly Monsters/b**

In the Grado mountain range, there was a battle going on. A very big battle. Not historically big, because that would involve more humans and heroic last stands, as well as more people dying. But it's big in a sense of this story. Without this battle, the rest of the following events couldn't have happened. Lady Ioran wouldn't have been shot in the head with an arrow and survive. Germaine and Logan wouldn't have fallen through the glass roof. And perhaps, most important of all, we would have never found out why Sir Magnus is so adept with using Light Magic, and what it has to do with a mysterious Bishop called Geoffrey.

Oh yeah, we don't actually know who Lady Ioran is yet. We'll find out later this chapter...or will we? Yeah, we will. But anyway, on with the big battle.

As the first monster, a huge spider beast that justified most people's phobias, decided that Sir Magnus was going to be its appetizer, Logan was already swooping down, Steel Lance in hand, screaming and whooping as the lance pierced flesh, or whatever spiders have. Exoskeleton? Why not. But whatever it was, it was pierced, the lance slipping into bone, a rattling sound its accompniament. The massive spider made a noise that could be described as screaming, or perhaps bloody painful to listen to. Either way, it collapsed, purple blood pouring from the wound. Withdrawing the lance as he swooped away, Logan gave another whoop, yelling down to Sir Magnus, "You owe me, Maggy!"

"Shut up," Magnus replied good naturedly, or as good naturedly as you could when talking to someone whose ear you want to stick a lance in, before turning his attentions to the nearest zombie, who was lurching. Not lurching towards anyone, just general lurching. The reason for this was that it had no head. It was harmless, but he made sure it wouldn't get a lucky swipe with those claws by hitting the zombie square in the chest with the Divine tome. Not the spell – the actual book. Sir Magnus was still incredibly strong for a Monk, and the hit sent the zombie sprawling on the floor.

Sir Magnus nodded to himself, before moving on, being careful to tread on the undead body with his heavy steel boots. Despite being a monk now, he kept the armour on.

Someone was watching the battle, and it wasn't Riev. It was another group of mercenaries. Slightly more famous than Sir Magnus' Mercenaries, these were the Troop of Lord Carstein. There were far less people in this group of Mercenaries than that of Sir Magnus. For one thing, there was only two people: Lady Ioran and Lord Carstein himself. Oh look, it's Lady Ioran. Told you she'd turn up eventually. We'll give a small amount of information on each of them.

Lady Ioran sits astride her horse, with an air of haughtiness that could, and probably would be mistaken for downright horribleness. However, she is a genuinely nice person. She has to be, she's a high-ranking member of the Church of Atheia (or Atheism. See what I did there?). A Valkyrie, she wears a deep black dress that's oh-so-figure hugging (and what a figure! ZING!), and for some reason, high heels of the same colour. Not exactly the best footwear to wear for riding a horse, but there you go. Her hair was long, black as well, with a single white streak that passed through it. It put people in mind of a druidess who did scary things to animals.

Lord Carstein is a similar sort of man, although lacking Lady Ioran's haughtiness. Instead, he was a quiet, well-spoken man with a wit about him that few possessed. He was also a fairly pleasant man, unless you got into an argument with him. Then you'd be removing a garden fork from your chest while your house was set on fire. The phrase 'so sharp he'd cut himself' springs to mind when you look at him, followed by 'what the hell's this freak wearing?' You'd think that because Lord Carstein's dress sense was very odd. Like Ioran, he wore mostly black. Smartly creased pinstriped trousers, and a silk waistcoat with nothing between it and naked flesh (hello, ladeez) gives him the appearance of an upper class gentleman, or at least a stripper trying to be one. Highly polished, and obviously expensive black shoes almost completes the look. What DOES complete the look is the monacle, cane and black, silken top hat that Carstein wears. He's a Druid, as you probably guessed. Atheia's a very liberal goddess, and can see that dark magic can be equally as destructive as light magic.

Atheia may be a liberal goddess, but she's still a psychotic bitch.

And now we return to Past Tense! Shazam!

Ioran turned to Carstein and frowned. "It seems that they're in trouble."

Carstein nodded, although he kept his eyes fixed on the battlefield. He was eyeing the armoured Monk, with a faint smile on his face. "Yes...it does, doesn't it."

"Should we consider helping them?"

Carstein nodded vaguely, not keeping his eyes off the Monk.

Ioran sighed. There was something about Carstein. He wouldn't let something drop. People who he'd had a minor quarrel with would meet him after ten years, and the first words out of his mouth would be, "Call my mother an ugly old toad, will you!" and find that their life will suddenly become a lot more interesting, but a great deal shorter. Ioran noted that. He had a dark side, constantly waiting to be released, and part of the reason he was so powerful was from denying he had a dark side. No, it was just a lapse in concentration when he went berserk, shoved a spanner into that man's brain, and banished his family to a demon dimension. Oh yes.

However, this didn't seem to be a recollection of a grudge. This was a happy time that Carstein was remembering, that much was apparent.

Carstein turned, and gave Ioran a smile. "Let's go..."

Ioran nodded, and whacked the horse across the side of the head with her staff. The horse got the message, and leapt out of the forest.

There was a lot of monsters still to die, Sir Magnus noticed, as he chanted from his Divine tome. As he did, he noticed dreamily how the light energy focused itself into a beam above him, which soon soared into the air. As it did, the monster he was aiming at, a centaur-like beast with an axe that was large and, perhaps more important, extremely sharp, watched it too, enthralled by the light and the pretty shininess. He was soon more in pain than enthralled as the beam soared down out of the sky, enveloping him, as Sir Magnus looked on emotionlessly.

He scanned the battlefield. Logan was above, tackling a group of three gargoyles by himself. As one of the gargoyles stabbed with its lance, Logan swung his own Steel Lance around in a wide arc, using it as a sort of club. It smashed into the first two, sending them sprawling to the ground with broken wings. The third one was smart enough to dodge. However, as it was feeling pleased with itself, Logan thrust the lance forward, impaling the beast on it. Retracting, Logan watched with a sort of glee on his face as the beast fell, landing on the other two and bleeding all over them.

Mr Jack meanwhile was fencing with a Skeleton, and seemed to be winning. Even though there was five Skeletons. Even though he was only wielding an Iron Sword against a mixture of Killing Edges and Silver Swords. Even though he shouldn't be winning. It was a perversion of basic outnumbering, but he was doing it. And now, Mr Jack leapt gracefully over the group of bones. As he landed, he swung his sword with almost inhuman speed, catching three of the skeletons in the head. Skeletons were never the sturdiest of creatures, and the heavy blow from Mr Jack caused them to lose their heads. Literally. And die. He restarted his fencing with the two remaining ones, with every sign of enjoyment.

Geraldine was nowhere to be seen, but she was probably doing some nasty damage. He could hear the Thunder spells being cast, and the lightning crashing into the ground. He could only presume he was winning.

He turned his head round so he was facing forward again, and saw two people walking onto the battlefield with every sign of casualness. One was sitting astride a horse and, as he watched, started chanting. Waves of light started to burst forward, hitting one of the massive spiders that was scuttling towards them. The words 'ripped apart' can be used to describe what the spider looked like once the beam had dissipated and the body was visible.

The other person Sir Magnus recognized. He was in the army at roughly the same time as Sir Magnus. In fact he was in the same platoon: the 3rd Division of Wyrmslayers. He remembered one of the campaigns they had been on...

Or rather, he will next chapter, because I want to add suspense. So nyeh.


End file.
